Monday, July 21, 2008

Quotes: Genius

The idea in bold-face print is a summary of the quote. The number after the topic is the page on which the quote was found.

GeniusGenius 798 Perhaps genius is only in the expression. "Perhaps…he, whose genius appears deepest and truest, excels his fellows in nothing save the knack of expression…."Hawthorne: “The Procession of Life”

Genius 920 "Mad" is the verdict on people who speak beyond the ordinary as well as too wisely or too well. "Owen Warland had gone mad…how universally efficacious—how satisfactory, too, and soothing to the injured sensibility of narrowness and dullness—is this easy method of accounting for whatever lies beyond the world’s most ordinary scope; from Saint Paul’s days, down to our poor little artist of the beautiful, the same talisman has been applied to the elucidation of all mysteries in the words or deeds of men, who spoke or acted too wisely or too well." Hawthorne: “The Artist of the Beautiful”

Genius 938 The spirit of genius goes beyond the rules. "The very spirit of genius, muttered Copley to himself; how otherwise should this carver feel himself entitled to transcend all rules and make me ashamed of quoting them." Hawthorne: “Drowne’s Wooden Image”

Genius 952 "…there can never be an American genius." Hawthorne: “A Select Party”

Genius 118 You'll know a genius when all the dunces together speak against him. "When a genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him." Jonathan Swift. Portable Curmudgeon.

Genius 209 "Genius is patience." French. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Genius 477 A true genius implies intuitive thoughts, stored experience, and a giant leap across the abyss. "…but to be a true genius, whether as a poet or a scientist, implies thought on a profound intuitive level—the drawing upon an inexhaustible store of miscellaneous experience absorbed and filed away in subterranean cellars of memory, and then making a mental leap across the dark void of ignorance." Robert Graves. “The Case for Xanthippe [Plato’s shrewish wife].” 1960. Gross, ed. Essays.

Genius 571 Genius poses new questions that others can later resolve. "The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions, which time and mediocrity can resolve." H.R. Trevor-Roper. “Thomas Hobbes.” 1945. Gross, ed. Essays.